3. Ineffective use of color and lighting.
Do not depend on the venue to provide lighting for your booth. Especially if you put a big arch over your booth and then don’t put any lights underneath it. And for goodness sake, make sure your colors match, standing next to one booth right now with red letters on a green background. #rsac2026

2. Ineffective use of booth space
#rsac floor space is more expensive than a New York City apartment. And some companies plop, big, huge monstrosities, right smack dab in the middle of it. Or they hide their people and demos behind walls minimizing traffic flow through their booth. Don’t try to integrate a meeting room into your booth. The show floor is no place for serious meetings.

1. Ineffective or incorrect branding.
I should be able to tell what the name of your company is and what you do from 20 feet away. Not just a buzz word or a slogan. So many booths I walk by and have no idea who they are or what they do. Considering the price of a #rsac booth that should be the number one priority.

Since @muelli asked here are my top 3 booth design fopahs (Note I am not a marketing expert. I’ve just been in this industry for an extremely long time.) I’m not gonna call any companies out by name because, well, they know who they are. (1/?)

@itgrrl not to defend #rsac, they do have a massive counterfeit badge problem, and have received credible physical threats in the past, so I totally get verifying registration name with ID, but agree that the name printed on the badge should not matter at all. Forcing printed name to match gov ID name does way more harm than good. #rsac2026

@dangercake most people don’t :)